Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Philo also informed his good friend Dr. Fenger of the box of heirlooms discovered at the warehouse. He also explained the significance of Ransom’s having seen Philo’s photo of the homeless family-“A representation of desperation,” Philo finished.

“What about Alastair?” asked the doctor, not looking up from his work.

“What about Alastair?” asked Philo.

“How is he holding up?”

“ Ahhh …yes, well, he is the strongest man I know in all regards but this …well this had him reeling, I can tell you.”

“I must see him and soon.”

“To medicate him?”

“I need to talk to him.”

“I suspect he is home by now, but most certainly unconscious.”

“Thanks, Philo. I’ll catch up with him.”

“So what do you make of the latest victim?”

“Sixteen, maybe fifteen. Bit older than the others. Male…weight about-”

“Hold on! Male? Ransom believes her… ahhh , him… ahhh , it a female.”

“It’s rather impossible to tell when the chest and private parts are removed, now isn’t it?” asked Fenger.

One of his assistants quietly said, “Trust us, Mr. Keane, we would know.”

Fenger continued aloud dictating as another assistant took down his every word. “Ninety pounds, long blond hair-seemingly that of a girl’s.” He stopped to give Philo a nod. “Missing every appendage and major organ, excluding the brain. Bones show normal growth, no obvious disorders, multiple stab wounds and multiple carvings after death.”

Alastair had indeed found his home and his bed; he calculated he had not had any sleep for thirty-six hours, and his last sleep had been disturbed at best. He showered, shaved, and went to bed, drawing the heavy burgundy curtains around his bedroom like a cloak. In the semi-dark, he struggled to find sleep, fitful of mind, feeling guilty at his humble comforts, knowing that a killing family in the manner of a coven of wolves continued to hunt its prey in Ransom’s city.

His attempt at sleep was disturbed, jolted by his ringing phone, and he cursed his ever having got connected, as everyone called it. By the time he managed to roll over, climb from bed, and stagger to the phone near the door in the foyer, whoever was calling had given up. He imagined it to be Chief Kohler or Behan or Logan or someone else at the Des Plaines station house, but there was no telling; else it could be someone with the morgue, Christian himself, or Philo, or perhaps Jane or Gabby.

Just as he climbed back into bed, the phone again rang. Just as he got back to the phone, it stopped ringing, but it was replaced by the tinkle of the doorbell, followed by someone’s knocking as he gathered a robe.

When he threw the door open, it was Jane staring back at him. She rushed in and past him, going for his bedroom. She’d never been in his home before, and so it took her a moment to locate the bedroom but she did. He followed her in and found her disrobing, saying, “I want you to make love to me, Alastair.”

Saying nothing in return, he took her in his arms, his robe coming open. She reached round him with arms extended, kissing him passionately and with vigor. Between kisses, she said, “I so admire you, Alastair. I do…I do.”

“What’s brought this on?” he asked.

“I’ve realized what you’ve done.”

“About what?”

“How Gabrielle is so happy and come into her own because you encouraged her to drop out of Northwestern and work under Christian Fenger, and to pursue what she finds of true interest and fascination-postmortem work of the sort left to the coroner.”

“I did not take those actions. She did.”

“You saw what was in her heart, and you encouraged her, and she is the love of my life, and I’ve never seen her more inspired,” she replied. “She loves Christian and the work.”

“He’s intentionally kept her off the Leather Apron case, you know,” he said, kissing Jane again. “Christian’s fearful of losing her.”

“Losing her how?”

“Should she see the worst cases before she’s been prepared, before she’s ready. Says the Vanishings case is the worst he has witnessed in all his years, and it’s disturbed him to his core.”

“As it must anyone. Look, Gabby knows what he’s doing and why, and we’ve talked about this old-fashioned nonsense, this idea a woman doctor must be Molly-coddled.”

“He’s only got her best interest at heart.”

“No, he’s got his own best interest at heart!” she countered. “Gabby is a woman, and she’s my daughter, and I tell you she can handle any medical job thrown at her, including a postmortem on a child.”

“I believe it.”

“And Fenger’s just discovering it today.”

“How so?”

“She’s storming his office to tell him how she feels.”

“Good for her.”

“She’s stronger than any of us knew, and one day she’ll be the coroner for Chicago, and if not for Chicago then another major city.”

“Good for her. Now kiss me again.”

She did so. Their passion rose, and soon they were in his bed, a bed he had shared with no other woman, and Jane proved far more amorous than any woman he had ever lain with. Their lovemaking unfolded like a flower at first, growing in intensity, each lover picking up on clues from the other. Soon both aware of the other’s needs, wants, desires, and their most sensitive areas, each playing to the escaping sounds and movements of the other until a kind of orchestrated dance evolved, a dance of bodies wrapped about one another.

Afterward, Ransom found the kind of sleep that had so long eluded him. He awoke eight hours later to find himself alone again, Jane gone, and for some moments, he wondered if it’d happened at all. An avid reader, he felt like the lead character in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown. Had his bride been there or not? Was Jane “his” or not? Or had it all been an amazing illusion, a trick of his addled, fatigued brain…or not?

But the confusion was settled when he smelled her presence yet in the room, along with other telling clues. The disarray of his bed for one, the tossed robe and nightshirt, not to mention his own deepest inner pleasure on reliving the moment as the odors of their lovemaking filled his nostrils.

“We make an excellent pair,” she’d whispered in his ear, to which he scratched and replied, “And we make excellent chemistry together.”

“Magical…electrical,” she said to this.

He laughed. “Phrenologically phenomenal.”

Now he heard someone coming through the door in the other room, and a peek told him she had returned with a sack filled with groceries. She went straight to the kitchen, believing him still asleep. He threw on his sleepwear and combed his thinning hair, looked critically, at himself in the mirror and wondered what Jane saw in him. He took a long moment to gauge his girth and his clumsy hands, as well as turning a jaundiced eye to every wrinkle, every smile line, every tooth in his head that remained. Then he got round to his ears, his less than penetrating eyes, his receding hair-line, and the gray, and the thinness of it all. Whatever does Jane see in me , he wondered again even as he heard the crackle and snap of bacon, the smell wafting in to “wake” him.

Ransom and Jane spent a pleasant morning, but soon Alastair was busy pulling his team of investigators together to canvass Chicago for every hole in the city where a suspected family of cannibals might have set up shop anew, as obviously the book warehouse could no longer cloak such heinous activity. Ken Behan and Jedidiah Logan in turn called on their own network of snitches and connections with other police officers in locating the strange and deadly family. To help in the matter, Ransom had Philo Keane duplicate the photo he’d inadvertently taken-a representation of what the deadly family looked like. The number of stab wounds from different weapons was set at five, so they were looking for a family of five, all old enough to wield a knife. In the photo, the mother cradled an infant in her arms.